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By Michael
Wilmington
Debra Winger has been out of sight too long. It's been seven years
since her last movie, 1995's "Forget Paris," a forgettable romantic
comedy with Billy Crystal, and her new picture, "Big Bad Love,"
reminds us how terrific she can be. There's a sass and bite to Winger's
acting, a grinning intelligence, unabashed sexiness and total immersion
that make her one of the movies' few hipster female stars. And this
is the right sort of return vehicle for her: a cranky and sometimes
ravishingly poetic labor of love that she produced for her writer-director-actor
husband, Arliss Howard - and in which she plays, selflessly, a small
part as a feisty ex-wife.
"Big Bad Love" - like its big bad hero, Mississippi writer-miscreant
Leon "Bobby" Barlow (Howard) - is bursting with talent, alive to
all kinds of strange beauties but always dancing near self-destruction.
Based on the 1990 short-story collection of the same name by Larry
Brown, it's been co-written and directed by first-time filmmaker
Howard with a surprisingly sure-handed mix of raunchiness, melancholy
and lyricism. A portrait of the artist as an aging bad boy, it depicts
Barlow sliding through a world of booze, sexual longing and dangerous
revelry.
The film's script is based not on the title story of "Big Bad Love"
(which is about a dead dog and dysfunctional sex) but on the climactic
novella "92 Days," which is about the anguish and absurdity of a
writer's life. The movie's Barlow, a moody, unpublished novelist,
works on house-painting jobs with his best pal, Monroe (Paul Le
Mat), sometimes carousing with Monroe and his sparkly girlfriend,
Velma (Rosanna Arquette). He also bedevils ands cajoles his own
ex-wife, Marilyn (Winger), and their two children, Alan and Alisha
(Zach Moody and Olivia Kersey), while ignoring good advice from
his mother (Angie Dickinson) and knocking out novels and tales on
a little manual typewriter - stories that keep getting rejected
by far-away agents and publishers.
Like "Barfly" (1987), which was about another boozy writer, Charles
Bukowski, "Big Bad Love" tends to romanticize its subject's drunken
recklessness. But it doesn't skimp on showing the waste of his life
or how badly he's damaging himself and others. Barlow is a gloomy,
middle-aged boozer lost in hallucinatory fever dreams - in marked
contrast to the cheerful Monroe, a gagster with a private fortune
who claims to put the "bull" in "ebullience." But if Barlow's visible
life seems a waste or a hell, it's partly because the core of his
existence is somewhere else: in his writing. And that hell might
be redeemed by sympathetic publishers or readers - like the more
supportive Betti Deloreo, a New York book person whose glamorous
voice is supplied by Sigourney Weaver.
The style of "Big Bad Love" is close to the British and French art
films of the '60s and early '70s - especially artist-rebel movies
like "Morgan" (1966) or "Petulia" (1968). Howard is in love with
both the tough realism of Brown's writing and the glorious artifice
of films itself. He uses that artifice - lyrical composition, bravura
editing, bizarre fantasy sequences - to take us deep inside Barlow's
head, into his hallucinatory daydreams (an indoor rainstorm, erotic
bathtub fantasies) and savage melancholy.
Howard cuts freely between dream and reality, present and past.
But he also loves his actors and gives them all star turns, affectionately
indulging Dickinson's earthy charm and Le Mat's antic boyishness
as much as Winger's gutty spontaneity. There are also a remarkable
few minutes from Michael Parks as an elderly shop owner, Mr. Aaron,
who supplies Barlow with his booze and who, more than anyone else
in the picture, seems to have stepped right out of the Mississippi
landscape.
"Big Bad Love" is a showcase for Howard and Winger and, despite
radical alterations in his story, a showcase for Brown, too. It's
a literary film par excellence. Howard not only respects this material,
but he also respects what's most literary about it: the pungent
language, the visionary dreams and the scalpel-sharp dissection
of a lonely man dodging anguish. In the end, the movie suggests
that Barlow's indulgent life - his drunken driving, emotional excess
and even his last somewhat improbable breakthrough as a writer -
are all things for which he (and we) must pay.
Though you couldn't call "Love" a complete success, it's packed
with talent and intelligence, wayward poetry and bluesy longing.
Let's hope Howard gives his producer-partner Winger an even stronger
personal showcase the next time around. He owes her.
3 stars
"Big Bad Love"
Directed and co-written by Arliss Howard; co- written by James Howard,
from the stories by Larry Brown; photographed by Paul Ryan; edited
by Jay Rabinowitz; production and costumes designed by Patricia
Norris; music supervised by Joe Mulherin; produced by Debra Winger.
An IFC Films release; opens Friday, March 15. Running time: 1:51.
MPAA rating: R (language, some sexuality).
Leon Barlow - Arliss Howard
Marilyn - Debra Winger
Monroe - Paul Le Mat
Velma - Rosanna Arquette
Mrs. Barlow - Angie Dickinson
Mr. Aaron - Michael Parks
Michael Wilmington is the Chicago Tribune movie critic.
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